I am sensing the sarcasm from the submission headline of this but do not think that is the appropriate thing. I do have the trust of the NSA. In fact I will say this to you I believe that the NSA is perhaps the most upstanding of all of the agencies of the government. Oh you will say BUT OM MAGOODNESS THEY ARE DOING THE SPYING. What do you have for hiding from they? What do you do to cause the fear of you from they who are not wishing to cause the fear of you but instead are hoping to reduce the fear of you by preventing the terrorism.

Maybe if you had the appreciation for these individuals and the hardworking you would understand.

Someone brought this up in an earlier thread, but it's a perspective I had never really thought of;

All things aside (which is hard to do, considering basic, fundamental American rights and all), all of that, put aside for just a moment,... What an incredible, monumental, epic boondoggle. Such flagrant waste, fraud, and abuse. The NSA has spent an untold amount on this.. We don't even get to know. And for what. Let's assume they know everything... They can't use it. They can't share it. We know for a fact they can't even look through it all.Can you imagine if they were scientist, ornithologist, say, and went to congress asking for a budget to collect everything imaginable on ivory billed woodpeckers.. An unlimited budget to collect all information on each of them. Each individual bird. How many mites were in their nest, etc.. And they had to promise in their budget to never, ever use the data. To collect more than they had the capability to process. For science, you know...

sanriosucks:Someone brought this up in an earlier thread, but it's a perspective I had never really thought of;

All things aside (which is hard to do, considering basic, fundamental American rights and all), all of that, put aside for just a moment,... What an incredible, monumental, epic boondoggle. Such flagrant waste, fraud, and abuse. The NSA has spent an untold amount on this.. We don't even get to know. And for what. Let's assume they know everything... They can't use it. They can't share it. We know for a fact they can't even look through it all.Can you imagine if they were scientist, ornithologist, say, and went to congress asking for a budget to collect everything imaginable on ivory billed woodpeckers.. An unlimited budget to collect all information on each of them. Each individual bird. How many mites were in their nest, etc.. And they had to promise in their budget to never, ever use the data. To collect more than they had the capability to process. For science, you know...

sanriosucks:Someone brought this up in an earlier thread, but it's a perspective I had never really thought of;

All things aside (which is hard to do, considering basic, fundamental American rights and all), all of that, put aside for just a moment,... What an incredible, monumental, epic boondoggle. Such flagrant waste, fraud, and abuse. The NSA has spent an untold amount on this.. We don't even get to know. And for what. Let's assume they know everything... They can't use it. They can't share it. We know for a fact they can't even look through it all.Can you imagine if they were scientist, ornithologist, say, and went to congress asking for a budget to collect everything imaginable on ivory billed woodpeckers.. An unlimited budget to collect all information on each of them. Each individual bird. How many mites were in their nest, etc.. And they had to promise in their budget to never, ever use the data. To collect more than they had the capability to process. For science, you know...

My understanding is that it just spits out random memory blocks that may or may not be particularly useful. The NSA was installing back doors into hardware and has the ability to track actual phone calls so I don't see how this is particularly useful to them

jshine:It'd seem paranoid ... except for all the well-documented nefarious plots that we've seen already.

Serious question--how many upstanding citizens have been/think they have been/are thought to have been farked by those NSA practices? For the purposes of this question, do not count read-only use of personal email, Facebook, etc. but otherwise not influencing people's lives as "farked." Also, I don't really count finding but staying quiet about Heartbleed (even if it allowed ID theft by non-NSA criminals) because it was out in the open for everyone to see; I would however count it if they actively created it, or cases where the NSA used Heartbleed as an avenue to legitimately fark someone.

I think I did hear about at least a few cases where the federal government seems to have silenced or shut down some people and businesses. I understand that even if it's 1 person, that's 1 too many; and even if it's 0, it's still a serious violation of civil liberties. So my above question is obviously not the same as asking "Is what the NSA does OK?"

However, I still think it is a valid question for certain practical considerations. For example, if the number is extremely low, I would rather the NSA were the exploiters of Heartbleed than cybercriminal organizations. Both are bad but only the latter would have practical implications. Of course it could be both, which is the worst part about the NSA weakening security.

Personally if I were an American taxpayer I'd be disappointed if the NSA didn't know about it and wasn't actively exploiting it. You sort of expect intelligence agencies to be doing this sort of shady stuff as part of their job.

Yankees Team Gynecologist:jshine: It'd seem paranoid ... except for all the well-documented nefarious plots that we've seen already.

Serious question--how many upstanding citizens have been/think they have been/are thought to have been farked by those NSA practices? For the purposes of this question, do not count read-only use of personal email, Facebook, etc. but otherwise not influencing people's lives as "farked." Also, I don't really count finding but staying quiet about Heartbleed (even if it allowed ID theft by non-NSA criminals) because it was out in the open for everyone to see; I would however count it if they actively created it, or cases where the NSA used Heartbleed as an avenue to legitimately fark someone.

I think I did hear about at least a few cases where the federal government seems to have silenced or shut down some people and businesses. I understand that even if it's 1 person, that's 1 too many; and even if it's 0, it's still a serious violation of civil liberties. So my above question is obviously not the same as asking "Is what the NSA does OK?"

However, I still think it is a valid question for certain practical considerations. For example, if the number is extremely low, I would rather the NSA were the exploiters of Heartbleed than cybercriminal organizations. Both are bad but only the latter would have practical implications. Of course it could be both, which is the worst part about the NSA weakening security.

Hush, nuance and careful consideration of verifiable facts have no place here, begone!

Doktor_Zhivago:My understanding is that it just spits out random memory blocks that may or may not be particularly useful. The NSA was installing back doors into hardware and has the ability to track actual phone calls so I don't see how this is particularly useful to them

Doktor_Zhivago:My understanding is that it just spits out random memory blocks that may or may not be particularly useful. The NSA was installing back doors into hardware and has the ability to track actual phone calls so I don't see how this is particularly useful to them

yeah, thats the other point about this- the NSA was paying millions of dollars for backdoors in RSA and other security firms. if they *were* going to do this, why did they do such a crap job?

This NSA/CIA crap is all fun and games until Darrel Issa becomes President. Like the Bush administration said during the run-up to Iraq, "If you're not for this war, then you're supporting the terrorists."Shortly thereafter, the Patriot Act became law and that made anyone deemed by the Executive to be a terrorist or a supporter of terrorism subject to Patriot Act provisions--pretty much everything available up to and including death without trial.

I'm pretty sure we will have President's that don't have an entirely benevolent nature and may, from time to time, treat political opponents badly to the full extent of the law and beyond. Since the full extent of the law allows drone attacks on your house if the Executive wants it, I'm a little concerned about where all this may end up. Because I once wrote on the internets that I thought Darell Issa sucks donkey balls and a few other statements that may not be considered complementary. He might burn my house and steal my car just because NSA/CIA could accurately discern my absolute disgust of the man. He would probably also fark my chickens because that is his MO. Please think of the chickens.

meow said the dog:I am sensing the sarcasm from the submission headline of this but do not think that is the appropriate thing. I do have the trust of the NSA. In fact I will say this to you I believe that the NSA is perhaps the most upstanding of all of the agencies of the government. Oh you will say BUT OM MAGOODNESS THEY ARE DOING THE SPYING. What do you have for hiding from they? What do you do to cause the fear of you from they who are not wishing to cause the fear of you but instead are hoping to reduce the fear of you by preventing the terrorism.

Maybe if you had the appreciation for these individuals and the hardworking you would understand.

Who can we believe? The techno-blogger with his military surplus jacket and Che posters blaring Skrillex as he writes informative essays on message boards and Wordpress sites. Get with the program people!

Yankees Team Gynecologist:jshine: It'd seem paranoid ... except for all the well-documented nefarious plots that we've seen already.

Serious question--how many upstanding citizens have been/think they have been/are thought to have been farked by those NSA practices? For the purposes of this question, do not count read-only use of personal email, Facebook, etc. but otherwise not influencing people's lives as "farked." Also, I don't really count finding but staying quiet about Heartbleed (even if it allowed ID theft by non-NSA criminals) because it was out in the open for everyone to see; I would however count it if they actively created it, or cases where the NSA used Heartbleed as an avenue to legitimately fark someone.

I think I did hear about at least a few cases where the federal government seems to have silenced or shut down some people and businesses. I understand that even if it's 1 person, that's 1 too many; and even if it's 0, it's still a serious violation of civil liberties. So my above question is obviously not the same as asking "Is what the NSA does OK?"

However, I still think it is a valid question for certain practical considerations. For example, if the number is extremely low, I would rather the NSA were the exploiters of Heartbleed than cybercriminal organizations. Both are bad but only the latter would have practical implications. Of course it could be both, which is the worst part about the NSA weakening security.

Doktor_Zhivago:My understanding is that it just spits out random memory blocks that may or may not be particularly useful. The NSA was installing back doors into hardware and has the ability to track actual phone calls so I don't see how this is particularly useful to them

Considering Americas history in the intelligence business, its amazing that anyone would have trusted the NSA to begin with.I mean, our government is seriously farked up when it comes to this. Nothing good is going to happen.

/great book, btw./its like reading about the keystone cops./only more sad, tragic, and infuriating.

Doktor_Zhivago:My understanding is that it just spits out random memory blocks that may or may not be particularly useful. The NSA was installing back doors into hardware and has the ability to track actual phone calls so I don't see how this is particularly useful to them

What's faster: cracking folks passwords OR just monitoring them while they change them.

pdkl95:Well, it's at least 1 in 6 writers. We should add in all the people in jail that were not told the proper source of the "evidence" against them (probably because of parallel construction)

I'm looking for a "body" count so to speak (not literal deaths, but persons hassled/persecuted). I understand that granting law enforcement this access opens the door to all kinds of abuses, so I'm interested in hearing the actual horror stories. Note that I'm not saying that I think it's low--I'm interested in whatever the result is, high, low, or anything in between. I don't see a lot of these specific stories around, but that could just mean they're not easy to document.

That opens the question to how effective the initial tests for patches have been, since there are a lot of "nodes" on the internet. Sure, gmail.com, yahoo.com, or bankofamerica.com may be fixed, but don't a lot of these places also implement some kind of third-party B2B back-end processing with names like virtualaccountservice or something with "cdn" in it? So there's the question of whether those servers are patched, not to mention the actual hardware routers and switches.